


These Broken Wings

by CalamityCain



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCain/pseuds/CalamityCain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After wreaking havoc on earth, Loki escapes punishment and imprisonment on Asgard, only to turn up again one day. But it is not quite the return he planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Broken Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this was indeed inspired by that Beatles song.

You are softest in sleep. The beginnings of dawn dance across your face and turn back the years. For the next minute or so, I can pretend none of the horrors ever happened.

The towering being who less than a year ago left a trail of bodies in his wake at a murderous whim murmurs a sigh in my bed. I could kill you now, and none would be the wiser. To catch you unawares is a rare thing. After all, not even the prisons of Asgard could hold you. A shapeshifter and trickster to the end, you wriggled out from beneath the enchanted bars and fortified walls. None can possess you, brother. Not even I. I, who stood by you when no one would.

Were we right not to pursue you? For here you are, nestled in my pillow.

You came back in the end.

How did you find your way to me? How, in your broken bird-form, did you land at the windowsill of your old bedchamber at the very moment I entered it? Do the Norns work in strange ways, after all? I would believe more wholly in fate had your sly wisdom taught me not to.

I knew it was you from the eyes. Green, jagged irises unlike those of any feathered being in all the realms. Sharp with desperation, with hurts and madness past, but – more urgently – with pain. Your left wing was shattered in three places, your right leg in two. When I took you into my palms, the fight had all but left you.

I had never ached to see your old wicked smile more than I did then.

"He is strong," said the one healer I trusted to keep you a secret. Did she know your identity? – I can't be sure. She realised you were no bird. But the look we exchanged seemed enough to secure her silence. You must have known this, for you were docile enough in her fingers if not in mine. "He will mend quickly enough."

Quickly, but not quick enough.

 

~

 

The healing turned out to be long and painful. For both of us. Almost unfailingly your cries would wake me in the dead of morn; when I tried to soothe you, I received long red scratches and uncontrolled bursts of magic. It seems your grievous wounds, and whatever sufferings had marked you prior to your crashing through the window, had reduced you to the acts of a wounded beast. Or a frightened child. A child, armed with the gifts of gods, but helpless to use them for anything more than lashing out blindly.

Long nights for me. Longer days for you. I had no choice but to cage you while I tended to my duties as ruler-to-be. Sometimes I would come back to find you had scratched small grooves into your beak in frustration. Other times you would greet me with the coldest and briefest of glances. But that, you must know, I am used to.

My mercurial brother. As fleet as the wind, made of fire and ice and magic.

Except your magic is a flicker of itself in your wounded blackbird form. And when I am not enraged at you for your stubbornness, almost to the point of dropping you from the highest tower, I wish I could give you everything. All the laughter and the battles of wit and days of our sparring in the sun, your spellcraft against my sword. The way you would dart around me like an impish shadow and pull hard on my hair repeatedly until I realised it was a double you had conjured.

Full of boyish pride and outrage, I would proceed to pound you into the ground until we were both panting and laughing. In short gasps, you would tease me: "Will you ever not fall for that?"

I would breathe our shared warmth back into you. I would return it all to you, to make you strong again.

Even if it meant you slipping from my grasp. Again. 

 

~

 

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night,_  
 _Take these broken wings and learn to fly_  
 _All your life, you were only waiting_  
 _for this moment to arise._

 

The brightening sun stirs you from the depths of slumber. Almost fully healed, you had begun to return to your old form the night before. It started with an increase in size – like a blackbird with the girth of an eagle. When fingers finally emerged from the glossy feathers, I transferred you to my bed and slept with you cradled beside me despite your ardent protests.

Peaceful rest, at last.

When I next open my eyes, you are fully formed, curled tight against my chest. Marble-pale and perfect.

I know that should you wake now, you will withdraw from me, cool and hard again. So I leave you first. I slide out as quietly as my bulk will allow and shield your nakedness with the coverlet. With a child's instincts you draw it close to you. Your hair fans out, entrancingly dark against the pillow, resembling the feathers you shed during the night.

"He's beautiful, isn't he?"

It seems I'd left the door unlocked. I turned to see your healer leaning against the doorjamb. Sigyn is her name; I remember now. She is striking rather than pretty, all smooth angles and solid bones. An enticing creature with a mass of red hair and deep curious eyes.

"You knew," I said.

"Known for the longest time." She looks down at her palms with knitted brows as if trying to keep emotion at bay. I'd done the same myself many a time.

Her lip twitched just the slightest. I know then, in that moment, that she loves you. It is a love than runs deep and strong and old. And it is far more than you deserve.

"When you brought him to me that night," she says in low tones, "I nearly wept. To see him like that...well.”

There is really little left to be said. I have never spoken more than five words to her before my errant brother tumbled injured into our hands.

And here we are, with nothing much to say still. After a time she looks up at me. her eyes are wet with tears and gleaming, Valkyrie-fierce.

Then, just before you rise, she leaves. A graceful bow; and she is gone.

I approach the bed. You awaken just as a sliver of sun breaks through the curtains to light up the gold in your green eyes. I can see why Sigyn loves you. Free as fire and just as wild. Cold as the ice prisms of Nilfheim, and even lovelier.

The innocence of sleep has left your face. But there is no hardness, no hatred clawing new lines into your face. Just for now, you are my brother. Just for now, you are the wily mischief-maker. Not a murderer. Not a stranger.

You are Loki. And I love you.

You get up, carefully, testing your limbs and finding them whole. Then a hand wanders up my arm. Light green wisps trail from your fingertips and form runes on my skin. I almost flinch; before realising that the magic is benign, that you are merely testing it the way you do your legs. They warm my shoulders gently like an embrace. I return the sensation by throwing my arms around you.

"You will not stay, will you?" I say.

Your hands hold me tight. You bury your fine-boned face in the curve of my neck where it fits perfectly. You never do answer me, but you do utter six words in a whisper that will stay with me forever.

_"Never doubt that I love you."_

Then you dissolve in a swirl of feathers. In the space of a breath, you are gone.

I catch the last feather before it melts like a sigh into the empty air. It feels like a brush of your skin, your voice. Like a silken lock of your hair.

Some strange instinct tell me to hold it against my cheek. So I do.

And then, quite suddenly, you’re…there. As if you were right beside me, head still fitting perfectly in the hollow my neck, I feel you. My face is warm and wet. Am I crying? I feel your lips curve in a smile. And in that small curve is the joy and wilfulness and warmth of old.

You will return when the wind brings you back to me. But not before then.

Fly free, brother.

You are Loki. And none can own you.

 

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night,_  
 _Take these sunken eyes and learn to see_  
 _All your life, you were only waiting_  
 _for this moment to be free._


End file.
